A new type of fabric can sense the heat of the human body and automatically release it to the outside air.
Wearable devices have always made clothes smarter, but one of the most basic functions you want to achieve on a piece of clothing-keeping you warm or cooling as needed-is still frustratingly difficult to achieve. Now, researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have developed a new material that can sense the temperature of the human body and automatically adjust the heat absorbed or released by the body.
One of the easiest ways to regulate body temperature is to put on or take off your clothes. However, previous research in the field of smart clothing has proposed different solutions, such as a jacket worn on both sides, cool on one side and warm on the other, so that you can turn it over as needed. A high-tech attempt to solve this problem is a "robot" jacket, which uses machine learning algorithms to determine a person's body temperature, and to open or close the vent accordingly.
UMD fabric seems to be a more elegant solution. Its creator said that clothes made of this material will be able to automatically respond to infrared radiation (the main way the body releases heat) and let it enter the outside air.
To do this, the fibers are made of two different synthetic materials, one absorbs water and the other repels water, and then both materials are coated with carbon nanotubes. The idea is that when water (ie, sweat) is absorbed by half of each fiber, it will twist the fibers and bring them closer together. This allows the fabric to cool the wearer in two ways at the same time.
First, it opens the pores of the material, allowing more heat to be released. Second, the more active cooling comes from the tighter bonding of carbon nanotubes. This changes the electromagnetic coupling, "tuning" the nanotubes to absorb more than 35% of infrared radiation and absorb more heat from the wearer.
"You can think of this coupling effect as the bending of a radio antenna, thereby changing the wavelength or frequency that resonates with it," said Wang Yuhuang, the study's corresponding author. "This is a very simple way of thinking, but imagine putting the two antennas close together to regulate the electromagnetic waves they receive." When the fibers are closer together, the radiation they receive changes. In clothing, this means that the fabric interacts with the heat emitted by the body.
The research team claims that this dynamic infrared gating technology makes this fabric the first "true two-way regulator" of human body heat, and it is clear that it starts to work before the wearer realizes that he is getting too hot Too.
It does not sound as bulky as an artificial intelligence jacket, and according to the inventor, all materials are already readily available on the market, and carbon nanotube coatings can be used in conventional dyeing processes.
The research was published in the journal Science.
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